CHIP SHOTS

Stuck on seven

Once again West Virginia University's attempt to rise in the BCS standings has been foiled. Despite losses by number two Boston College and number four Arizona State, the Mountaineers could not gain any ground in the BCS standings. West Virginia is still in the seventh spot.

Unbeaten Kansas, on the strength of a 76-39 beat down of Nebraska, jumped past the Mountaineers. The Jayhawks were eighth last week and are now fourth in the BCS.

Missouri, now 8-1 after a 55-10 win over Colorado, moved from ninth place last week to sixth, one spot ahead of WVU this week.

With four games left plenty can happen, but for WVU to get a shot at a national title a lot of chips have to fall the Mountaineers' way and the Mountaineers will have to take advantage of the teams remaining on the schedule, but more football next week.

Now it is time to mention the Mountaineer basketball team which opens play under Bob Huggins in a little over a week. At the recent Big East Media Day WVU was picked 10th out of the 16 teams in the conference. It is difficult to say if that is a slight or not, but you can rest assured that Huggins will use that as a motivating tool for his team.

With the nucleus of the team which won the National Invitational Tournament last year returning, logic dictated that the Mountaineers would have been picked in the top half of the league. The thing to remember here is that this is the Big East, and basketball is very competitive. Perhaps being picked 10th is not so much of a slight as it is testimony of how tough the league is to handicap.

The bottom line is that the pre season ranking has little to do with anything except what a coach can do with it to put a chip on his players' shoulders. And it will certainly be interesting to see just what this coach can do with John Belein's players.

The first thing Huggins did was put them in the weight room. It has been said the results are stunning on some players. Huggins wants to play in your face defense and he wants to out rebound opponents. His first team at West Virginia isn't as big as Huggins would like, but look for improved rebounding and look for defense to be present.

The really good thing is the players Beilein left behind are more athletic than a few of his early teams, so Huggins will not have to struggle too much to implement his style of play. Add to that the fact that his players can still shoot threes, this will be an interesting team to watch develop.

As Huggins has said, "We should be all right if I don't screw it up."